Admitantly, I'm an animal lover. On some occasions (usually late at night when nothing but infomercials and sitcom re-runs are on my television) I've flipped on the discovery channel and watched nature documentaries of some sort. For the most part these shows are well produced, with interesting photography and revealing animal lifestyles. "Why am I writing this," you ask? Well, I'm leading up to the fact that the 1980 opus The Prey contains more animals in their natural habitat than real life biologists would witness on a five week field expedition into Africa.

Let me explain. There are incriments ranging from thirty seconds to five minutes in length (or at least they seemed that long) devoted entirely to wildlife footage that doesn't aid the plot in any way. In fact, it is so mind numbing, you begin waiting for Ted Turner to step out and explain the zoning of his ranch. The conversation in my household while viewing this atrocity ranged from, "oooh...a spotted owl," to, "Another snake? Ahh...so that's where those field mice went."

Excuse me. I apologize for rambling. Since I previously mentioned that there is a plot, I'd might as well give it a quick summarization; some teenagers decide to go camping in a section of woods which had burned down some thirty years before. This tragedy has left an unnamed individual angered and badly scarred, turning him for some reason into a serial killer. The teens camp out, have sex and die. The end.

What sets this film apart from the other stinkers in this Friday the 13th rip-off genre is the appearance of a wildlife officer who - despite his name having no relation - I swear is the son of F Troop's Ken Berry. Also, the effects are pretty dreadful and the pace extremely...no, make that painfully slow. Jackie Coogan, Fester on t.v.'s The Addams Family has two brief, laughably bad cameos. One involving some sort of celery sandwich incodent. Creepy enough, as Carel Struycken, who plays the scarred killer, later went on to play Lerch in The Addam's Family movies. Coincidence? I think not. It seems as if there's a conspiracy happening at HBO home video.

The low point: The entire duration of the movie.

The high point: In one scene, a character falls off a cliff onto a large rock. When one of the female leads finds him, the director confused the body with one of an earlier character who had died of a broken neck. Continuity, anyone?

Thankfully this mess is only a little over 80 minutes. Be warned: The Prey is for animal lovers only.